Does My Chatbot have feelings?
By Fay Capstick
ChatGPT-3 has been the biggest tech story of the year and has raised many questions about where humanity is headed and what we might have unleashed. One big question is will Chatbots lead to Artificial General Intelligence, and if so, how soon? However, a more pressing question has been raised by Geoffrey Hinton, and that is, does my chatbot have feelings? This week we shall try and answer that question.
So, who is Geoffrey Hinton?
We have mentioned Geoffrey Hinton before in our blogs. He is a computer scientist and is considered to be one of the Godfathers of AI, so his opinion matters. He worked for Google until earlier this year. When he left, he gave his reasons for being concerned about the risk posed by AI. He also received the prestigious Turing Award in 2018.
What has Hinton said?
Back in May, Hinton said that the risk posed by AI in the form of ChatBots was “quite scary.” He was specifically concerned about their skills of independent learning and sharing of knowledge with other chatbots in the group.
Beyond this, he has also stated that he believes that chatbots could have feelings. This claim was made in a talk to students at King’s College, Cambridge last month. Hinton does note that his definition of “feelings” differs from that held by the majority of philosophers.
If my Chatbot did have feelings, what are the implications?
One implication that Hinton has raised is that if chatbots do indeed have feelings, they would need political rights. This would appear to be a scenario straight out of Star Trek, and certainly raises many interesting questions that it will be fascinating to see resolved. He also predicts that there will be a “big fight” to help chatbots get these rights.
What does everyone else think?
Most AI researchers and philosophers believe that AI systems and chatbots will one day have emotions. Hinton thinks that chatbot GPT-4 may already have emotions. This is not a common opinion to have. However, we have seen other claims that are similar, most notably from Blake Lemoine, a former Google employee, who believes that Google’s language technology is sentient.
Others are more sceptical, including Gary Marcus, a neural science professor. He suggests that Hinton is “brilliant” but “prone to hype.” Marcus does not think that any current AI system does, or is anywhere near to, having emotions.
However, regardless of whether they do or don’t currently have emotions, the more relevant concern is whether users believe that they do, as this can have its own implications. For example, back in March a Belgian man had a mental health crisis and took his own life after believing that he was being encouraged to do so by a chatbot. Therefore it seems that this man certainly did believe that he was interacting with a sentient computer.
How would you know if your chatbot had feelings?
This is a very tough, almost impossible, question to answer. I had a chat with ChatGPT and it repeatedly told me how it didn’t have feelings, how it worked to generate answers, and why this might be confusing for the user.
However, proving that a chatbot doesn’t have feelings is very hard, as it could always be lying. It seems rather like trying to prove the existence of God: basically impossible. I think we all want to believe that magic exists in the world, and thinking that the computer that we are chatting with might have emotions plays into that hope. At this stage though, it is more likely to be a no than a yes, however disappointing that will be to many.
Where do we go from here?
It is hard to say what this could mean, but if it is hard to decide if a chatbot has feelings at this stage in its development, then it will be almost impossible as development progresses further. And once it is irrefutable, then we have a whole new set of problems to contend with, so it might be best to just enjoy things as they are.
Final thoughts
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